Maine Books

I read the following review of Morgan Grayce Willow's Arpeggio of Appetite in Whistling Shade, and I must say I couldn't agree more. Morgan's poems are sharp as crystal, a delight to the tongue, rich as truffles. Try them. You'll enjoy this book as much as both I and Rhonda Niola have. It's a rare treat! . . .


"There is something about the beginning of spring that quickens my blood after a long, cold winter. For those of you like me who appreciate nature and enjoy reading haiku, grab Morgan Grayce Willow's chapbook "Arpeggio of Appetite."

Each of the poems is written as a cinquain--five lines consisting of 2,4,6,8 and 2 syllables equaling a total of 22 syllables. Reminiscent of Basho and Emily Dickinson, the poems use language sparsely but are full of rich images that stamp the reader's mind with a picture. In "Bat", few words are used but the reader is left with the full meaning of the poem at the end: "Window/open unseen./A bat sweeps through the room,/sounding./ A benediction for faint hearts."

For those who enjoy things in small packages (or just can't devote time to reading, say, The Iliad) these poems are perfect. They can be read while waiting for the bus, doing laundry or being interrupted by kids. By the time I arrived at the end of the book, I had found my appetite and was wanting to read more."

- Rhonda Niola, Whistling Shade

[...]

Compiled, written, and edited by Maine art expert Carl Little and Arnold Skolnick (owner and founder of Chameleon Books), The Art Of Maine In Winter is a visually splendid, full-color collection of breathtaking works of art capturing Maine during the winter months. Ranging from abstract-style oil on canvas landscapes of snow, to woodcuts of young people enjoying simple winter sports, to impressionistic renditions of hard work among tall trees, The Art Of Maine In Winter presents an eclectic variety of gorgeous artworks, along with brief yet thoughtful commentary on the spirit of the art itself and the land reflected in the artist's view. The Art Of Maine In Winter is a welcome and highly recommended addition to any personal, art school, or community library Art History collection.

This discreet unpretentoius little book is a gem. It gets a great balance between facts and info and the spirit and art of the state. A great starting point for planning a trip to the state of Maine. I was keen to find out as much about the state before my planning was too advanced and this has been an enormous help in steering toward some (apparently, not been yet so not sure) very interesting places. It is not designed to sell the state or any particular element such as hotels or dining. It does cover what it says the Spirit and the Art. A really great little book that I will treasure and return to I will also be buying others in the series!!

Artists covered: Thomas Cole. Fitz Hugh Lane. Frederic Edwin Church. William Stanley Haseltime and many others. There is is nice variety of work in pencil, pen and ink, watercolor, oils, etc. It's a great instructive book for those who want to do landscapes along rocky seacoasts. I especially loved the drawings.

This modest-sized book contains much information on the history, properties, manufacture, and value of asbestos. There are some quaint photos, such as that of an asbestos-based fallout shelter, and that of "giant candle snuffers" used effectively by British firefighters during WWII against German magnesium-thermite incendiary bombs. Statistics are provided on the production of asbestos as well as the hundreds of everyday items that contain asbestos.

The Our Lady of the Angels School Fire (pp. 127-131) is instructive. The lack of sprinklers and the prevalence of wooden-interior trim were bad enough, but so were the combustible ceiling tiles, made as they were out of wheat straw. Maines makes the following strong statement: "If Our Lady of the Angels had had asbestos-containing ceiling panels, flooring, and wall finishes, there would almost certainly have been time for all the building occupants to reach the exits and little or no loss of life...The role of combustible ceiling panels, so significant in the loss of life in the Chicago school fire, had drawn the attention of fire-safety professionals [much earlier]." (p. 131)

Maines puts the cancer and other risks of asbestos in perspective. For instance, she comments: "For parents sending their children in, say 1959, to what were widely known as firetrap schools, the possibility of disease in a relatively small number of adults three decades later...Almost as many persons in that one fire [Our Lady of the Angels School] as in all of the fatal cases of asbestos-related disease reported in publications by that time..." (p. 164)

"Autographs: A Key to Collecting" by Mary Benjamin, 1963, 345 pages. Written by the great female autograph dealer; I bought several items from her. Provides a historical summary of: collecting, terminology, evaluation in pricing a document, famous forgers, how to detect forgeries, confused identities, care and preservation, and two nice tables detailing the names of Napoleon's marshals and family members. Needed by anyone thinking about investing money into buying autographs.

I highly recommend taking a glimpse into a life of a boy named Evan. Excellent and emotionally uplifting book

Table of Contents:

1. Energy Lingo
2. Renewable Energy Sources
3. History of Solar
4. Quantifying the Solar Resource
5. Heat Transfer
6. Passive Solar
7. Windows as Solar Collectors
8. Thermal Mass
9. Mass Walls
10. Solar Greenhouses
11. Active Solar
12. Solar Hot Water

A "banger" is compositor's slang for an exclamation point, and I must exclaim, after just finishing BARTER ISLAND, that author Peter Scott banged this book. I inserted an exclamation point onto the verso of the back cover before I closed it. It was that good.

Don't believe I have ever read such exquisite character development in fiction, and I've read a gazillion books, at last count. This book was all about the people, and these particular people were all about life in America.

I became afraid, before the ending, that the author would let me down by failing to fict a climax into the fiction, that he would be true to life and would abandon the characters as normal as in real life, in which most conundrums are never resolved. Yet in the ending I was pleased, satisfied, climaxed, yet empowered to wonder even more, especially to wonder whether war veterans are heroes or victims or cowards or more in war and afterlife, as most warriors, I can only suppose, must wonder long after warring. And to wonder about whether love will be requited, as we ~should~ wonder, wonder if her scent will sail him back into nurse again.

The book moves so well in the present tense!

The language was real poetry. A song of the Northeast. Lyrical. I really enjoy reading the writing of an author who glories in the composition, the punctuation, the phrasing, the updiagramming of the sentence to put it all into place for the reader, into sequence for the reader's breathing while reading. Each page was loaded with provocative thoughts, the thoughts that make moments of life more than steps in time: the creative comparisons, the unlikely insight, the notice. This is imaginative storytelling and fulfilling reading.

I would complain that there was too much drinking. Maybe the characters did, but is it important enough to tell so often? Later I found myself thankful that the author was true to the prevalence of alcohol as a potion to calm the rough waters of war veterans' memories.

Now, multiply all the above comments by a thousand to the positive. I will think about these characters for a long time, and now I can truly imagine life on the Maine islands, where the sea serves as a moat against convention, even though it is always breached, and the tide brings semidiurnal promise of safe haven. I was enthralled by this book.

This is a must have book for young lawyers who want to try cases. All the fundamentals are here, and mastery of fundamentals is all you need to outperform most of the competition. Professor Murray is a long time trial lawyer, director of the Harvard Law School trial advocacy program, and has taught countless trial advocacy classes for lawyers. This is an opportunity to learn from the best.